No but attending university teaches you about science and scientific method, how to think, how much work it takes to get anything published. It also teaches humility, and that expertise is narrow and that you shouldn’t go up against experts by re-tweeting anti-vaxx stuff. Or inventing poor security products.
Cooking and philosophy are hardly of the same importance as infosec and public health and don’t have nearly as massive risk factors.
Which is why transparency might be at place here. Also, regardless of the team composition and expertise, the issues remain unaddressed and the CEO is the one calling the shots. Failure to listen when someone gives them constructive critique without asking for money makes me wonder, why is he the one communicating with the community.
First year of computer science barely touches on cryptography.
My critique about why we shouldn’t support people who peddle anti-vax propaganda did not intersect with my opinion about SimpleX as a program. My critique outside SimpleX was about why would someone support this kind of person. As someone who supposedly is in medical field I find your lack of concern about the anti-vax stuff really worrying.
I’m not saying we can’t have really really competent people who didn’t get a college degree. But practically none of the cranks have it, and practically all of the competent people have it. Arguing edge cases is acceptable but this case was already shown to not be up for it so he’s not an exception so why even bother bringing out people who made it to Google through hard work. I don’t see hard work. I see another messenger with half-baked Tor support, too much emphasis on the queues, false advertising and rigged and misrepresented comparisons to competition.
Finland is quite well educated and the anti-vax thing isn’t a massive problem. But it’s not hard to see the trend of this stuff spreading. The goal is much more heinous than some healthy skepticism. It’s to destroy the institutions of society to pave road for authoritarianism.
But I find it highly unlikely we’ll make any breakthroughs here and this is very far from the original topic of figuring out what’s catering to OP’s threat model.